There has been commercialized a multiple pane with a structure in which a pair of glass panels are arranged facing each other and spaced at a predetermined interval, and the pair of glass panels are hermetically bonded with a hermetically bonding member at peripheries thereof to form a space inside the multiple pane, and the space is made to be in a reduced-pressure state by evacuating air inside the space.
It is expected that the multiple pane in which the pressure of the inside space is reduced shows great thermally insulating effects, dew prevention effects, and sound insulating effects, as a result of presence of a vacuum layer whose pressure is lower than the atmospheric pressure between the pair of glass panels, relative to a multiple pane constituted by two glass plates simply bonded to each other. Therefore, such multiple pane attracts great attentions as one of eco glass in current situations in which the importance of energy strategy rises.
Such a multiple pane is produced as follows. A pair of glass panels are arranged facing each other and are spaced at a predetermined interval with multiple spacers of metal, ceramic, or the like in-between. A hermetic seal made of low-melting-point frit glass is applied and heated to hermetically bond peripheries of the pair of glass panels, and thereby a hermetically-enclosed space is formed between the pair of glass panels. Thereafter, air inside the hermetically-enclosed space is evacuated through an outlet formed in one glass panel and an evacuation pipe made of glass or metal, and finally a tip of the evacuation pipe is sealed by melting so as to hermetically enclose the hermetically-enclosed space. As a result, the multiple pane is produced.
In another production method, a pair of glass panels arranged facing each other with spacers in-between are placed inside a reduced-pressure chamber in a reduced-pressure state, and peripheries of the glass panels are hermetically bonded with a hermetic seal. In another production method, an evacuation pipe is provided to part of a hermetic seal between a pair of glass panels with a hermetically enclosed space in-between, and then air is evacuated from the hermetically enclosed space.
However, in any production method, gas adsorbed on a glass surface may be discharged after sealing and this is likely to lead to increase in internal pressure. In view of this, a multiple pane with a reduced-pressure space includes an adsorbing member for adsorbing gas such as nitrogen, oxygen, and moisture which is to be discharged after sealing.
The space inside the multiple pane has a thickness of about 0.1 mm to 0.2 mm and therefore is very thin, and thus it is necessary to dispose a thin adsorbing member. As a result, a volume of the adsorbing member inside the space may decrease. However, when an area for bearing the adsorbing member is greatly increased in order to increase a volume of the adsorbing member, the appearance is likely to be poor. When a solid adsorbing member is disposed inside the reduced-pressure space, the solid adsorbing member is likely to move in transporting, for example. Therefore, it is difficult to dispose the adsorbing member at a fixed position.
In order to solve the above problems, in conventional multiple panes, for example, an internal face of a glass panel of a multiple pane is partially removed to form a recess, and a solid adsorbing member is disposed in the recess (see Patent Literature 1). Further, there has been proposed a method of disposing an adsorbing member in an outlet (see Patent Literature 2).